International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies ISSN 2028-9324 Vol. 18 No. 2 Oct. 2016, pp. 371-380 © 2016 Innovative Space of Scientific Research Journals http://www.ijias.issr-journals.org/ Corresponding Author: Brahim Hiba 371 TEACHING ENGLISH FROM A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE Brahim Hiba University of Ibn Tofail, Kenitra, Morocco Copyright © 2016 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: This paper tries to investigate the issue of teaching English as a foreign language in the Moroccan context. The writer of this paper claims that the way foreign languages, in general, and English, in particular, are taught in Moroccan high- schools and universities is devoid of any awareness of the social and political loads of the language being taught. For instance, the way English is taught in the Moroccan context does not encourage students to see the social and ideological dimensions of the use of the English language. More specifically, when reading a text, be it a newspaper article, a short story, a poem or a political speech, most students read it passively; they do not question the socio-cultural context and the ideology of the text they read. Students do not analyze the strategies that are used in that text and through which it constructs its premises and conclusions. For this reason, this paper will draw on some quite interesting ideas in Critical Literacy and Critical Discourse Analysis to come up with some useful teaching strategies that could encourage students minimize their passive reading habits and could hone their critical thinking and critical reading skills. KEYWORDS: Critical Literacy, Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Language Awareness, Discourse Awareness, language, ideology, power. "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922 1 LANGUAGE IS THE HOUSE OF BEING For many centuries, the majority of linguists, grammarians, and philosophers thought that language is a mere means of communication used by human beings belonging to the same community. However, some 20 th century linguists (Whorf (1956), Sapir (1949), De Saussure (1967)) started making some comparative approaches to different languages and came up with some surprising results. Some of these results are that languages are not sheer linguistic media, but in fact they play crucial roles in the formation of the thought and worldview of every speech community. In this connection, Heidegger, the German philosopher, points out that "language is the house of being," (Heidegger cited in Olson, 2000:23) which means that man dwells in language. He is surrounded by language and can never jump out of language and examine it from outside. To put it in other words, Heidegger wants us to understand that language is the world itself and there is nothing outside language. When man wants to think about language he must use language, for language is nothing but Being itself. So, language is not a mere system of signs (Olson, 2000:24). Language is a worldview. In the same context, Whorf (1956), for instance, claims that language is not simply a way of voicing ideas, but is the very thing which shapes our ideas. One cannot think outside the confines of one’s language. We are mental prisoners and unable to think freely because of the restrictions of the vocabulary of the language we speak. To illustrate this point, Whorf says: We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary , the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds– and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds […] We cut nature up,